The present disclosure relates to a shoe brake assembly for rail vehicles.
From European Patent Document EP 0 665 154 B1, a shoe brake assembly for a rail vehicle is known. The assembly comprises a brake pad which can be pressed against the tread of a rail wheel by an application device. For operating the shoe brake assembly, a suspension system is provided which permits the brake pad to carry out a certain lateral movement along with the wheels. By corresponding pressure or tension members of the suspension, the brake pads are pressed against the wheel treads for generating a frictional force. The resulting high stressing of the wheel treads is disadvantageous because the service life of the wheel is shortened and a roughening or corrugation of the wheel tread is produced. The roughening or corrugation of the wheel tread leads to a high running noise during the rolling operation of the wheel, which is why, in the case of modern rail vehicles, separate disk brakes are frequently provided which, however, are comparatively expensive. In addition, the one-sided braking load of the wheel results in high thermal stress.
In order to address those disadvantages, an elastic brake body is disclosed in German Patent Document DE 19840065, in the case of which a bearing body is provided with recesses into which the friction material elements are inserted. These friction material elements form a joint friction surface and are carried in an elastic manner. Although these elastic brake bodies, to a certain extent, permit a compressing and rebounding of the friction material elements when these are pressed onto the tread of the rail wheel and thereby avoid the formation of hot spots, a roughening and corrugation on the tread is not completely avoided.